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Cast your mind back to the May issue of 911 & Porsche World and you’ll recall our top tips for getting the best bang for your buck when playing with a budget of between £4k and £40k (if you missed out, hop online and order a copy of the magazine at bit.ly/issues911pw). Among the 911s, Boxsters, Caymans and super-SUVs presented as star buys by industry experts, we sang the praises of products from Porsche’s long defunct transaxle family of cars. Offering performance and practicality in equal measure – and available with either four or eight-cylinder, traditionally mounted, water-cooled powerplants – these models have represented some of the Porsche scene’s biggest bargains for many years. The tide, however, is turning.
Long gone are the days when a 924 would empty your wallet for just a few hundred quid. Unjustifiably considered the ‘poor relation’ for many years, even the earliest two-litre models are fetching a premium in the current climate, which shows no signs of slowing down. Then there’s the 924’s successor, the 944. Even with a slushbox, questionable bodywork and a less-desirable-than-what-came-later ‘square’ dashboard (inherited from the 924), this brilliantly balanced Porsche (the manufacturer’s most successful product before anyone had heard of ‘Boxster this’ or ‘Cayenne that’) is likely to target your bank balance for thousands. Add a Turbo badge and you can talk telephone numbers. Great news for existing owners, not so good for those trying to get a foot on the ladder of Porsche ownership without breaking the bank.
In contrast, all but very early and very late 928s have remained surprisingly resilient to market trends. A 928 S2, for example, isn’t going to cost you much more (if anything) than it would have a few years back, whereas a good GTS is now in the sixty-grand-plus arena. Even renewed media interest sparked by the V8-powered ’s fortieth anniversary celebrations did little to bump prices, bucking a trend many of us have observed for years – when mainstream and specialist motoring media talk-up a particular make or model in the wake
